Railway’s popularity exceeds all expectations in Scotland

June 29, 2008

One of our members recently visited Scotland and had a chance to experience the brand new passenger service from Stirling to Alloa. He reported very good station buildings including waiting rooms and nice long platforms big enough for 6-carriage trains (“and you did not need a ladder to get off the train !”).

The devolved governments in Scotland and Wales have rightly been praised for their vision in building new railway lines and re-opening long-closed routes to better serve their communities. However it seems even the Scots underestimated the incredible popularity of this new service: a ticket office wasn’t included at the new Alloa station and with just a 10 minute journey into Stirling the trains are too full for the conductor to sell tickets either. The result is queues of people waiting for up to 20 minutes to buy a ticket at Stirling so they can leave the station !

Perhaps timid railway planning isn’t restricted to just England after all, and ScotRail are now hurrying to install ticket machines on the platform at Alloa.